One predictable consequence of the Congress’s electoral defeats in the Hindi heartland has been the emergence of new fissures in the INDIA coalition. You could argue, as many in the Congress do, that these fissures are not as massive as the media has made them out to be. But then the Congressmen would say that, wouldn’t they?
What is beyond dispute is that many leaders in the coalition comprising 28 political parties did try to excuse themselves from attending the alliance meeting scheduled this week. Some, like the DMK’s Stalin, the Tamil Nadu CM who had to deal with the aftermath of a cyclone, probably had more important matters to take care of. But most of them simply came up with excuses.
Why didn’t they want to come? Well, basically they wanted to send a message to the Congress. Off the record, most of them have always complained that they resent the Congress’s ‘big boy’ attitude in the alliance. Now that the Congress is down, they are using this opportunity to show their resentment.
But there is another reason. Even if the Congress had been sweet and reasonable, there would still have been problems. Most opposition leaders loathe the Congress. Partly because some of them are its former members. In fact, the Indian political scene is littered with opposition leaders who were once part of the Congress—from YS Jagan Mohan Reddy to K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) to Mamata Banerjee. (And that’s not counting BJP stars like Jyotiraditya Scindia or Himanta Biswa Sarma.)
Mamata Banerjee was pushed out of the Congress by PV Narasimha Rao and Pranab Mukherjee. Jagan Reddy became the target of a pointless UPA witch-hunt. KCR would have remained in the UPA had Sonia Gandhi granted his Telangana statehood request (it wasn’t even a demand at that stage). As it turned out, the UPA let him storm out before creating the state of Telangana in a manner that let KCR take credit for it.
All these people (to say nothing of those who joined the BJP) associate the Congress with dadagiri, unreasonable behaviour, and arrogance. Rare is the non-Congress politician—in any political party—who feels warmly toward the Congress. Indian politics is anyway divided between disillusioned former Congress members and diehards who have spent their lives opposing the Congress.
So, while the Congress has no natural allies in Indian politics today, it does have a lot of enemies. This makes forming any kind of alliance a challenge. For an opposition alliance to work, you need either an independent deal-maker like the late Harkishan Singh Surjeet or a leader like Sonia Gandhi, who was willing to approach other political parties with humility and request them to join the UPA in 2004.
Nevertheless, my guess is that once this week’s temporary muscle-flexing is over, the opposition parties will eventually reunite under the INDIA coalition. But all of them will make it a point to emphasise that in states where it falls on the Congress to take on the BJP (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, etc.), the party has made a mess of it.
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A united opposition can do little
The central assumption behind any alliance politics, but especially the INDIA grouping, is that you need opposition unity to defeat the party in power.
But do you?
The usual argument for opposition unity is framed in terms of vote share. For example, the argument goes, the opposition was able to defeat Indira Gandhi’s Congress in 1977 because it came together under the umbrella of Janata Party to avoid splitting the vote.
The contemporary version of this argument is based on two variables. The first is that the only reason the BJP wins is because the opposition vote is split.
But is that really the case? Let’s assume that the INDIA coalition had fought in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh as one bloc. Would it have made much difference? In Chhattisgarh, the BJP got 46 per cent votes—4 per cent more than the Congress. Was there an opposition party whose votes could have been transferred to the Congress?
In Madhya Pradesh, the gap was a massive 8 per cent. Could any alliance have defeated a party that polled 48.56 per cent votes?
Only in Rajasthan, where the difference between the BJP and the Congress vote share was just 2 per cent, could the gap perhaps have been bridged.
The second variable is the belief that votes are transferable. For example, if the Congress aligns with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, then all Congress voters will vote for the SP candidate in constituencies where there is no Congress candidate (as part of the alliance arrangement).
But will they?
The last time these two parties aligned in Uttar Pradesh, in 2017, they discovered that votes are not transferable. SP supporters did not all vote for Congress candidates. And vice-versa.
So, what is the electoral logic of the INDIA coalition? Whichever way you look at it, the arithmetic does not necessarily work against the BJP and in favour of the alliance.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi has got his act together, but is it enough? Modi is still a force of nature
The INDIA squabble is a sideshow
As far as I can see, joining the INDIA coalition has only two advantages. The first is that in the unlikely event of a hung parliament in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, precedent suggests that the President has to call INDIA to try and form the government even if the BJP is the single-largest party. Even this advantage would be meaningless if the BJP too has entered into a pre-election alliance.
It is the second advantage that may make some difference. Whenever people are asked to choose between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, a majority of them tend to choose Modi. In a Lok Sabha election, people are selecting the next Prime Minister given how presidential our politics has become under Modi. So, the BJP will always be the preferred option because polling suggests that most people are not as enthusiastic about the idea of Rahul as PM.
If, however, the INDIA coalition can make the election less presidential and seem less like a choice between Modi and Rahul, then perhaps people will vote on the basis of performance and policies, considering that the alternative to Modi is not an individual but a coalition of experienced leaders.
That could only work if the INDIA coalition partners come out united and are able to work together. Indians know how coalitions can turn fractious and break apart. As of now, the behaviour of the INDIA leaders does nothing to suggest that they can work happily with the Congress. At the same time, there can be no opposition front without the Congress.
So yes, INDIA may be squabbling. But frankly that is not as big a deal as the media is making it out to be. Even if the parties settle their differences, I doubt their unity will make any difference to the results of the next election.
As of now, only Modi can defeat Modi. The 2024 election will end in BJP’s defeat only if Modi makes mistakes or his popularity suddenly dips. The squabbling INDIA leaders are no more than a sideshow.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)